We Found the Hidden Cost of Data Centers. It's in Your Electric Bill [video]

I was looking into energy markets and how they work and it is truly a cluster of moving parts all along the Eastern Interconnect. The question is when is the shoe going to really drop? You can only keep prices going up on an inelastic good before something really bad happens, and this doesn't even touch climate tail risks like heat sagging tx lines across the grid.

This is a tangent, but one untapped source of energy savings that seems to be invisible to climate activists is Microsoft Windows' constant drain on resources relative to Linux and MacOS. It's shocking how energy inefficient Windows is even when it's doing absolutely nothing noticable for a user.

You are being funny, considering what a shit-show is Linux laptop power management.

I can pretty much guarantee you that the typical Windows desktop machine uses much less energy than the typical Linux desktop machine of similar capabilities. Linux power saving basically never works out of the box unless the user has carefully selected the platform to avoid the Linux kernel's numerous defects. By contrast every computer that comes with Windows has working energy-saving features from the factory because that's how Dell and HP get those Energy Star ratings.

Way to bring up Linux power management into an unrelated discussion x_x

Good news is that line replacement is definitely occurring. Especially for higher power lines, the modern conductors that are used for rewiring lines have lower loses and less sag.

PJM is a shitshow though.

The average windows box is full of so much bloatware, it likely evens out.

Because it is the exact opposite? Power management and drivers are a shitshow on Linux. When I want my Lenovo (RIP IBM) Thinkpad to last more than 2 hours, I have to boot Windows.

But is is no question: the Apple Silicon chips sip power. If you're looking to minimize watts consumed, a MacBook Air is still on top (or bottom), even if OS X has many pain points too.

Energy markets are deeply complicated markets. They are heavily regulated and have a lot of challenges outside of strictly cost of power. Worth remembering they have safety requirements, uptime, national security implications, truly the backbone of our economic welfare.

Only upside I see out of this huge demand for electricity -- hopefully nuclear will clear the deck on using coal, gas and diesel. If we can build and operate nuclear again we can level our long term cost of power. Combined with renewables its a good combo.

Other than that - power prices will always be derivative to the price of natural gas.

After looking at Vogtle 3/4 I highly doubt any admin including this one is willing to bear the cost.

I wholeheartedly agree. Software bloat is a hidden energy drain on corporate America as well as the general public no different than how landlords only leech rents from firms and individuals while providing nothing of value. There is no need to politicize by yelling at climate activists though.

It's true. There are more Windows desktops used in enterprise environments and households than linux and there are so many insane design choices like making the taskbar clock slider thing be written in react. How many useless clocks does that waste? That is a very easy optimization that can be remediated instead of being lazy and waiting for the next node from Intel or AMD.

Do you have more info on this? What's the deal with PJM's reluctance on upgrades?

This seems unlikely to me. Most of these machines are laptops nowadays. While my Linux system idles at 4W, the plug is only capable of going up to 60W. So even if Windows brought it to the point of nearly overheating the power brick (I’m no Windows fan, but I’m pretty skeptical there!), it would only be 1/10’th of a typical 600W window air conditioner.

The untapped energy savings is, IMO, getting people to run their climate control less. We should toughen up a bit, tell our brains that 50F-80F is the comfortable range. (Depending on humidity and your workload).

I think it’s coming soon. The data center demand is just one aspect. In New York, a combination of half baked policy to go carbon free by 2030, and 100% EV a few years later, combined with insane political decisions (Gov Cuomo decommissioning the nuclear plant that supplied 20% of NYC), and the black swan event of Trump starting a trade war with Canada (Quebec is the best source of electricity) is making electric delivery rates alone increase 30%.

On the gas side, we’re both forcing ratepayers to spend billions on conversion from low to high pressure gas mains AND prohibiting new gas service.

The environmental lobby is so dumb and ineffective - the public will be demanding that coal come back.

Vogtle is bad example. It was the first of its kind after a long stagnation of nuclear builds (US no longer has the ability to build and operate new nuclear) - that and the regulatory/licensing costs blew through the roof.

Vogtle is the wake-up call needed to get nuclear manufacturing/talent going again. I hear you but I think you are taking the wrong lesson.

I will add -- if indeed prices stay at Vogtle then yes Nuclear is dead. That said there's no way thats the new pricing going forward.

If there is one good thing the admin might actually do, it's gut the incredibly suffocating regulations on nuclear.

Nuclear is only a fraction as expensive as the regulations around it. My company has a division that deals with the nuclear industry, and I really cannot overstate how incredibly intense they are.

Imagine your company issued laptops and required 14 different "live scanner" security apps running with twice daily full system scans. Now be a productive dev on that system. Would you be surprised if every project runs far over budget and far over timeline?

I agree with you, nuclear and renewables are the future but surely there has to be a better way to speed these deployments to production right?

For any individual the difference is not noticeable. But across the several hundred million laptops in the US even 1 watt adds up.

Utilities are dragging their feet on interconnect. Tariffs are squeezing solar supply and probably will impact availability of materials and products (reshoring will take a lot of time if it even makes sense).

Nuclear regulatory environment is overly prescriptive. You need nuclear safety but you also can't use regulatory as a mechanism to shutdown all development - which has been the defacto case for the last 40 odd years.

Agree faster timelines are necessary -- we also need to see if this AI thing is real real or if its in over its skis a little bit. At this particular moment it feels like it might be selling more than it is offering - and thereby the energy demand won't materialize in the way that they assume...

Noting -- that the financial backers for energy products aren't all cash cows like tech companies -- they need to see real return on projects before they put up the necessary large amount of money and public-private partnerships given the risk on putting projects together like that.

Vogtle is an excellent example - it literally had a negative learning rate from construction of reactor 3 to reactor 4 (Reactor 4 cost more and took longer even though we ostensibly learned from building Reactor 3). The "West" has lost the ability to build mega projects, and until we regain that ability, nuclear is indeed dead. Some minuscule part of the issue is the licensing and regulatory regime, but it's a complete cop-out to lay the entirety of the blame there.

The UK is in the exact same boat with Hinkley C -- initially licensed in 2012 with a budget of £18 billion, construction starting in 2016 and a completion date in 2025. Now we're looking at £50 billion in cost with 'best case' start dates in 2030. All of that to generate electricity at over $0.20/kwh wholesale.

I compared to air conditioners though, which would also be multiplied by that several hundred million factor (well, maybe the laptops get an additional factor of, like, 4 because a room can fit multiple people with laptops, and you don’t need an air conditioner in every season).

If we’re looking at choices a person can make, every choice is multiplied by millions when applied to the entire population of a country, so the 1W differences are swamped by the equally scaled 10W differences.

As a desktop and laptop Linux user for many years, I wholeheartedly agree.

Every watt into laptops means a watt the air conditioner needs to move out.

you cannot ignore small things in the grand scheme as they add up.

The policy is intended to fail. There will be another wave of failed policy under the guise of “getting it right”. Because if you set the dates for 2050/2060 whenever the state is able to convert over, then businesses won’t do anything until 2050/2060. The most effective method forward is going to be continuously failed but enforceable policy to legally push industries and people into cleaner energy.

Agree that Cuomo decommissioning the plant was DUMB.

It doesn’t make sense to talk about “adding up” unless we define what we’re aggregating over. Residential energy consumption, for sure, is a significant chunk of energy consumption.

If we’re looking at the things we can do to reduce our individual consumption, it absolutely makes sense to prioritize the things which are large relative to our other individual contributions, first.

Why coal and not shale? Is this not cope?

> On the gas side, we’re both forcing ratepayers to spend billions on conversion from low to high pressure gas mains AND prohibiting new gas service.

On the gas side, Trump's one BBB greatly increased the caps on natural gas exports.

The reality is that the companies extracting NG are not going to be giving it to Americans, they're going to sell it abroad and rake in way more money.

Which would maybe be fine... if we also weren't currently (and severely) artificially limiting the supply of renewables. Um, oops. There's nothing left.

All of our lobbies are fucking stupid.

Computers use up extremely small amounts of electricity. Most people don't actually know this. Your washing machine is a good ~100 computers. A lightbulb? If it's not LED, that's a few computers. For one lightbulb.

Of course it depends on the computer, but if we're talking laptops or corpo computers it's like 25 - 50 watts. Supercomputers, like those used for AI, are different of course.

Fine, but I have already upgraded to the most efficient heat pump, and so I'm at the end of where I can go there. Likewise my insulation cannot be improved without a major remodel (My house is not built to modern standards so there is a lot of improvement, but those require thicker walls and a higher attic ceiling) and so while I'd like to do them they are not possible. What is left is the smaller things.